It’s not often a book opens with the introduction of a pretty cool character, an explanation of his powers and personal flaws only to murder him on page 3 and dismiss him as “kind of a dick.” That’s what writer Stuart Moore does in EGOs #1, a story about attempted superheroes in a far-flung interstellar future where a term like “Earthgov” exists. The title references Earth Galactic Operatives, a superhero team from the past which is about to be reformed in the present, but by the end, you also realize it alludes to the massive sense of self-worth it takes for a guy to decide it’s in the universe’s best interest to populate a superhero squad with clones of himself.
The “dick” in question is The Planetarian, a crime-scene investigator for dead worlds, whose lifelong philandering is ended by the return of a big bad called Masse, which prompts his former teammates in the EGOs, Deuce and Pixel, to try to put together a new team since their band broke up years ago. Deuce’s power is “persuasion,” and his wife Pixel was someone they rescued from her own evil clone-happy mother – or rather, she rescued them, although it’s unclear whether or not that was a result of Deuce’s power. In fact, most of this first issue, we’re not entirely sure whether or not Pixel’s will is her own – until she violently asserts it near the end when she’s not happy with Deuce (short for “seduce,” so you know this guy’s some kind of creep) and his method for building the new EGOs.
There’s also the matter of Shara, the adolescent girl from a shithouse planet who sees the big broadcast announcing the new EGOs and decides that’s what she wants to do with her life – and we also see how headstrong and resistant to authority she can be, so we can sense the kind of ruckus she’s gonna cause.
Moore’s writing style is fairly dense while still being breezy enough to have his narrator be a bong-smoking college kid in his underwear who’s barely in the story, although his relevance is hardly suspect. Gus Storms’ artwork is very detailed with rough edges, but without a lot of shadow or darkness to be found, which gives the story a sensibility that seems like a broken version of the Legion of Super-Heroes idea, although not quite in the way Hypernaturals did. It’s like someone tried to start the Legion, but everybody just got sick of each other instead of congealing around the big ideals.
Overall, EGOs #1 is a solidly entertaining start to what could be a pretty cool series.
